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Paper to the State of the Australian Cities Conference 24 - 27 November, 2009 Theme: City Social Title: Negotiating cultural difference in everyday life: some insights for inclusionary local governance

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Title: Negotiating cultural difference in everyday life: some insights for inclusionary local governance Michele Lobo Research Fellow Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation Faculty of Arts and Education Deakin University 221 Burwood Highway Burwood Victoria 3125 Email: Michele.Lobo@deakin.edu.au Negotiating cultural difference in Dandenong

Keywords: affective ambivalence, cultural diversity, white privilege, citizenship.

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Abstract

With the waning of state-sponsored multiculturalism, local governments in

Australia have assumed leadership and responsibility for establishing and maintaining

collaborative relationships with stakeholders to promote diverse and inclusive cities.

Engaging with residents often through consultation processes and interacting with key

institutions, local governments aim to value local knowledge and mobilise citizen

participation. This social interactive approach to building local knowledge in places

officially and popularly identified as socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse,

however, is fraught with interethnic tensions if cultural practices unintentionally

privilege whiteness. In this paper I argue that such tensions can also give rise to

moments of affective ambivalence that are productive if it leads to the

acknowledgement and questioning of white privilege within the formal agencies of

government. Such questioning provides the possibility to value the voices of local

residents and engage in meaningful intercultural dialogue. This paper draws on in-

depth interviews with planners, elected local councillors and residents in the City of

Greater Dandenong, Melbourne, to illustrate the potential that the affective dimension

of living with cultural diversity has in building governance capacity and inclusive

understandings of citizenship.

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Introduction Policies and practices that strengthen citizen participation and demonstrate the

responsive nature of local governments are recognised as essential for democratic and

inclusionary local governance (Raco, Parker, & Doak, 2006). At the level of local

government such practices have usually involved the implementation of policies that

focus on redistributive measures and the recognition of marginalised social groups

such as ethnic minority groups (Morrison, 2003). More recently, however, attention

has been drawn to the need for facilitating practices that promote intercultural

understanding and dialogue in the multicultural city (Amin, 2002; Fincher & Iveson,

2008). The call for this shift in local governance is essential given that current

research demonstrates that the city is a political site where residents often struggle to

live with cultural diversity despite the introduction and implementation of

multicultural policies in several nation-states since the mid-1960s (Dunn, 2005;

Leeuwen, 2008; Mavrommatis, 2006; Uitermark, Rossi, & Houtum, 2005; Valentine,

2008). Views on multiculturalism as a policy that facilitates and strengthens

intercultural dialogue vary with some researchers like Turner (2006, p.613)

underlining that in Britain it is seen as a policy that has ‘failed badly’ because there is

little interaction between dominant and minority cultures, while others like Mitchell

(2004, p.641) try to explore the causes and effects of the ‘current backlash’ within

liberal nation states. A critical appraisal of such policies, however, demonstrates that

it is far too simplistic to dismiss multiculturalism as a policy that has failed, but far

more productive to think about how such a political ideology can be used to resist

assimilation, shift the normative framework of whiteness and construct inclusive

understandings of citizenship (Amin, 2002; Forrest & Dunn, 2006; Meer & Modood,

2008).

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White privilege is crucial in understanding everyday practices of citizenship

and exploring the role that local governments play in facilitating intercultural

dialogue, particularly in neighbourhoods identified as socio-economically deprived

and culturally diverse. I argue that the affective dimension of such intercultural

dialogue is particularly significant for two reasons. First, ethnic minorities in such

neighbourhoods are often identified within policy discourse as second class citizens

who live ‘parallel lives’ with little meaningful social and cultural exchange with the

wider community (Turner, 2006). Second, such ethnically diverse neighbourhoods

are identified within official and popular discourses as rife with interethnic tensions,

fear and anxiety that impede intercultural dialogue (Amin, 2002; Birrell & Seol, 1998;

Young, 1999). This paper focuses on such a neighbourhood in suburban Melbourne,

the City of Greater Dandenong to illustrate that role that affective ambivalence can

play in unsettling such understandings, building governance capacity and inclusive

understandings of citizenship.

Contemporary research in Australia and Europe in socially disadvantaged and

culturally diverse neighbourhoods illustrate that local governments have begun to

assume a greater responsibility for promoting intercultural dialogue through the

implementation of a range of policies (Coaffee & Healey, 2003; Hohn & Neuer, 2006;

Keil, 2006; Permezel & Duffy, 2007). Engaging with residents often through

consultation processes and interacting with key institutions, the aim is to value local

knowledge and mobilise citizen participation. Such research, however, demonstrates

that a social interactive approach to building local knowledge is fraught with ongoing

tensions and struggles, but such tension and difference is not antagonistic but

necessary for an ongoing dialogue that includes a diversity of voices (McGuirk, 2001;

Permezel & Duffy, 2007). Permezel and Duffy, for example, in their research on the

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negotiation of cultural difference within the formal institutional space of local

government in Australia, argue for everyday multiculturalism that is marked by

informality, flexibility and even risk rather than a path that involves formal planning

and measurable outcomes. They attribute disagreement and conflict within the

democratic participatory process of local government to a normative and dominant

framework of whiteness that must be shifted to produce an ‘ongoing dialogue’

(Permezel & Duffy, 2007, p.362). Although Permezel and Duffy acknowledge the

awkward, confrontational and emotional nature of such intercultural dialogue within

community consultations and forums, they do not explore this dimension. Forrest and

Dunn (2006), on the other hand, in their analysis of community attitudes to Anglo

privilege, multiculturalism and racism in New South Wales and Queensland,

recognise the productive nature of ambivalence in understanding how we might end

the belief in the superiority of a dominant white and Anglo culture. Since the data

collected was based on telephone questionnaires, the research did not have the scope

to explore the affective dimension of living with cultural diversity.

This paper builds on research on local governance and multiculturalism, by

drawing attention to the affective dimension of intercultural dialogue. I argue that the

emotional nature of such intercultural dialogue produces moments of discomfort as

well as fascination, but it is moments of affective ambivalence that have the greatest

potential to be transformative within the sphere of local governance. Ambivalent

moments have the potential to contribute to enabling practices within the formal

agencies of government because they acknowledge other ways of knowing and being,

and welcome rather than scrutinise, stigmatise or exoticise cultural difference. These

practices are driven by trust, acknowledge social and cultural biases, value the voices

of local residents, and are attentive to their stories of civic engagement in voluntary

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organisations that are often driven by belonging to local places (Coaffee & Healey,

2003; Kearns, 1995). Such enabling practices provide the possibility for dialogue that

empowers local citizens and promotes horizontal forms of governance or partnerships

with informal voluntary and community organisations in ways that deviate from a

path of paternalistic governance. The paper draws on excerpts from 54 semi-

structured, in-depth interviews with social and cultural planners, elected local

councillors and residents in the City of Greater Dandenong that I conducted in 2003

as part of my doctoral research on the constitution and everyday negotiation of

ethnicity. The following section explores the concept of white privilege that I

explored in that research and builds on it by exploring affective ambivalence to

understand intercultural dialogue within the institutional/civic sphere of local

government.

White privilege and affective ambivalence. Within the current literature there is a general understanding that whiteness is

an invisible, unmarked racial norm/category, a normative position and ethnicity, and a

process that provides the power and privilege to include or exclude others (Bonnett,

2000; Frankenberg, 1997; Hage, 1998; Shaw, 2007). Frankenberg (1997) and

Kobayashi and Peake (2000) argue that such a normative position also involves the

engagement in cultural practices that are underpinned by unconscious assumptions

about racial groups/ethnic minorities that are made but rarely acknowledged.

Although the contemporary literature on whiteness recognises that the power and

privilege of whiteness is fragmented and variable in time and space, what is

significant are the unintended outcomes. For example, if whiteness functions as a

‘socio-spatial epistemology’ (Dwyer & Jones III, 2000, p.209) that regulates ways of

thinking about people and place, then participation or non-participation by ethnic

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minorities within the sphere of local governance is always scrutinised. Clearly, if

white privilege underpins governance cultures, it can impede intercultural dialogue

that aims to be inclusive and value a multiplicity of voices. This privileging of

whiteness is particularly relevant in exploring local governance practices in the City

of Greater Dandenong, given Hage’s (1998) analysis of the everyday politics in

Australian suburbia.

Examining the cultural politics following the increase in Asian immigration

since the 1970s, Hage argues that whiteness is a position of cultural dominance that

provides a privileged relationship to the nation. The outcome is that ethnic people,

migrants, people of a non-English speaking background (NESBS) and Third World

looking people (TWLP) are marked as ‘outsiders’, passive objects who are tolerated

and whose inclusion and participation in society depends on recognition by the

dominant White-Anglo culture. At the same time, however, this increasing cultural

diversity has led to the emergence of a paranoid nationalism within Australian society

that stems from the fear of losing the privileged relationship to the nation that comes

from being European and white (Hage, 2003).

Hage’s research on whiteness is relevant in understanding embedded cultural

values within local governance or what Coaffee and Healey (2003) and Hohn and

Neuer (2006) identify as governance cultures. An understanding of how white

privilege underpins such cultures is necessary for transformative change and shifts in

prevailing practices. Such change becomes evident through ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin

& Nielsen, 2008, p.1) that resist racist ideologies, develop an ‘anti-racist political

agenda’ (Dwyer & Jones III, 2000, p.219) and shift the normative framework of

whiteness within the institutional/civic sphere. These acts of citizenship can be

conceptualised as everyday deeds and ‘fundamental ways of being with others’ (Isin

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& Nielsen, 2008, p.3) that involves openness to difference. Such acts of citizenship

have less to do with rights and responsibilities that constitute formal membership in

the political community of the nation-state, and is substantive citizenship that is

experienced through informal understandings and ongoing everyday practices that are

part of the sphere of local governance; a sphere that involves negotiations of cultural

difference by elected local councillors, local council officers and organisations within

civil society.

Leeuwen (2008) argues that such everyday practices that involve cultural

contact have an affective dimension that must be explored if we are to learn to live

with cultural diversity. This affective dimension is significant in understanding what

inspires and threatens everyday multiculturalism because encounters with difference

produce a flow of emotions, sensed as embodied experiences that cannot be

understood merely by exploring the cognitive horizon of social reality (Leeuwen,

2008). Leeuwen draws on contemporary research to underline that communicating

across cultural difference results in positive moments of fascination, wonder and

surprise and negative moments of aversion, anxiety, pain and discomfort, but it is

moments of affective ambivalence that put ‘commonsense’ understandings of social

reality ‘to the test’ (Leeuwen, p.147) that are perhaps the most productive in

understanding the potential of intercultural dialogue in bringing about social change.

Such moments can be affective turning points that push ambivalence towards the

positive moment when cultural difference is respected and valued rather than

scrutinised or stigmatised. .

Insert Figure 1

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Dandenong Dandenong is a suburban area in south eastern metropolitan Melbourne,

Australia, approximately 29 km east of the City of Melbourne (Figure 1). Table 1

shows some selected characteristics of the Local Government Area of the City of

Greater Dandenong, a place officially and popularly represented as one of the most

socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse areas in Victoria and Australia (ABS,

2009; CGD, 2005; Hill, 2004)

Insert Table 1

Historical narratives of Dandenong usually trace the growth of the settlement

with the arrival of white settlers in the 1830s and the establishment of a squatter

settlement with pastoral runs and market gardens. Dandenong grew to become a

thriving market town with one of the largest stock and dairy markets in Victoria

(CGD, 1998; Ferguson, 1986, p. 1998). Since market gardening and dairying were

important activities, factories that canned vegetables and processed butter, cheese and

pork products were established in Dandenong in the early twentieth century (CGD,

1998). It was during the 1950s and 1960s, however, that Dandenong was recognised

as an industrial city and a working-class suburb (Alves, 1992; Bryson & Thompson,

1972). This occurred because of the location of what was popularly referred to as the

‘Big Three’. These were three large industrial establishments namely, General

Motors Holden (GMH) involved in the manufacture of motor vehicles, International

Harvester involved in the manufacture of farm machinery and H J Heinz, a fruit and

vegetable cannery. Workers in these factories were migrants from Britain, Poland,

Germany, former Yugoslavia, Greece, Malta and Italy who arrived in Australia in the

post-war period of industrial expansion, international migration and rapid

suburbanisation in Australian cities (Forster, 2004). Following the abolition of the

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White Australia policy in 1972, several new settlers were attracted to Dandenong

because of the availability of factory jobs and cheap accommodation. These new

settlers were from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 1970s and more recently from

Southern Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The increasing cultural diversity of the

population was accompanied by economic restructuring and several large industrial

establishments relocated or shut down. The outcome has been that today Dandenong

is officially and popularly identified as socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse

(Figure 2).

Insert Figure 2

Local government initiatives within the sphere of Social, Cultural and

Community Planning in Dandenong focus on redistributive measures and recognition

of ethnic minority groups by providing grants, supporting training programmes and

participatory activities that facilitate integration into Australian society. Engaging

with residents including elected local councillors and community groups, local

council officers, also prepare and implement strategic plans such as the Cultural

Diversity Plan (CGD, 2005). The aim of this plan is to work with diverse

communities to provide access and inclusion, support, enhance skills and celebrate

cultural diversity. It is part of a broader Cultural Strategy that focuses on mentoring,

support and skills development among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD)

communities and faith communities to promote continuing intercultural dialogue,

peace and harmony. Implementing such a range of policies and initiatives that

involves recognition and redistributive measures, however, also involves negotiations

and affective engagement between social and cultural planners, elected local

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councillors and diverse community groups through forums, consultations and

everyday conversations.

Exploring affective moments within local governance This section explores the affective dimension of living with cultural diversity

that is crucial in building governance capacity. I became aware of these moments

through reflecting on the emotional dimension of the research process from my

position as an ethnic woman, a migrant and resident of Dandenong. Therefore,

although I used the techniques of discourse and narrative analysis, a legitimate

method within the social sciences that provides an understanding of the ‘ways that

social life is mediated through modes of communication’ (Costello, 2005, p.51), I was

also attentive to the role that emotions played in such communication.

The negative moment During our conversation Mary, a social and cultural planner and an Anglo-

Australian woman who engages in community consultations and forums as well as

regular negotiations with elected local councillors had a strong opinion about the

commitment to responsible participation among ethnic councillors. In the following

excerpt, she draws attention to the tensions and feelings of antagonism that she

experiences when engaging in a dialogue with ethnic councillors.

Mary: I’d argue that the cultural, so called people from non-English speaking backgrounds on councils are more concerned with getting elected, than necessarily doing stuff that makes meaningful change.

They [ethnic councillors] have their own agendas, they want to get re-elected, so they tend to focus on what I call the sexy aspects of planning. And if it’s not sexy, or it’s not going to get them a big vote winner, they won’t participate. And if they think they’re going to get votes, they can be a real pain in the neck.

And these are people that are not necessarily themselves trained to understand issues of culture. Now they might be from a Vietnamese background, they might be from a Sri Lankan background, but just because they’re from an NESB background doesn’t mean they’re any

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more open to being culturally aware (Local council officer, interview, 10/07/03).

Mary attributes resistance to change within the sphere of local governance to elected

ethnic councillors who lack commitment, display self interest and desire political

power at any cost. Mary associates these practices with particular councillors, ethnic

leaders who belong to a non-English speaking background rather than those who are

Anglo and white. Such councillors challenge her ‘commonsense’ understandings of

what is normal or natural and create a lack of meaning and feelings of cultural

strangeness (Leeuwen, 2008). Therefore although theoretically Mary aims to value a

diversity of voices and engage in intercultural dialogue, in practice this negative

affective moment demonstrates that she privileges whiteness in understanding

commitment to political participation among elected local councillors. The outcome

is that when Mary recalls these moments, she marks and stereotypes ethnic

councillors who she interacts with through her work. In communicating across

difference although shared cultural meanings are uncommon, the recognition of

different values, meanings and perspectives enhances social knowledge (Coaffee &

Healey, 2003; Sandercock, 1998; Young, 1996). As a social and cultural planner

Mary recognises the importance of drawing on this knowledge to build institutional

capacity within local governance, but this negative moment demonstrates that the

normative framework of whiteness is difficult to shift. On the other hand, my

interviews with ethnic councillors showed that political participation was stimulated

by a deep commitment and emotional attachment to Dandenong. This was evident

when Gina, an elected local councillor responded to my query of what motivated her

to continue to participate in local council and live in Dandenong, even though most of

her friends and relatives had moved to more affluent and less culturally diverse

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suburbs. She said: “I love this town. I love it…it is this love for Dandy, wanting to do

things”.

Affective indifference or the positive moment? Amy heads the Social, Cultural and Community Planning Unit in the City of

Greater Dandenong. She has been working as a council officer for thirteen years and

was involved in the facilitation of several programs that involve providing support

and services for recent migrants such as early settlers from Vietnam and Cambodia

and more recently the Afghani and African community. Her greatest challenge,

however, was to “regenerate interest and a sense of pride” among residents and

promote harmony, despite the presence of socioeconomic disadvantage and diversity

in language, religion and culture. Amy took pride in working in a city where there

was a “terrific mix” and “brilliant diversity” evident in the varied architecture and co-

existence of mosques, churches and temples in the suburbs of Springvale and

Keysborough. In the following excerpt she emphasises the presence of harmony

rather than inter-ethnic or inter-faith conflicts in Dandenong:

Amy: We can, I believe, say that we are a harmonious multicultural city and that we are an example of where groups do get on with each other. There’s very, very, little example of ethnic friction (Local council officer, interview 22/05/03).

For Amy negotiating cultural difference produces feelings of wonder, fascination and

surprise rather than interethnic friction. In managing cultural difference she is less

aware of the normative framework of whiteness that she draws on to understand

intercultural harmony, and it would seem that the affective dimension of living with

diversity produces only positive moments. On the other hand, it can be argued that in

engaging in intercultural dialogue, Amy normalises meanings of ethnicity and reduces

the ethnic subject to an object that she gazes upon. Hage refers to this practice of

reducing the ethnic subject to a passive and exotic object within the national space to

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‘spatial managers’ (1998, p.44) who privilege whiteness in understanding harmony in

local spaces. In this situation the positive moment closes down the possibility of

reflexive thinking and practices that shift the normative framework of whiteness and

can contribute to affective indifference in intercultural encounters. Leeuwen (2008)

argues that such indifference is an outcome of intense exposure or habituation that

ceases to surprise because cultural otherness has become a part of daily life. For Amy,

who is keen to manage ethnic difference and promote intercultural harmony it would

appear that her feelings shift on a continuum from so called positive moments to

affective indifference. This is in contrast to Mary the social and cultural planner

introduced earlier, who spoke of negative moments and inter-ethnic tensions.

The ambivalent moment The following conversation with Mary, however, demonstrates affective

ambivalence rather than negative moments. Mary’s continuing intercultural dialogue

with ethnic councillors and cultural and linguistically diverse groups also stimulates

strong feelings and a desire to bring about social change:

Mary: How can you provide a link between people? How can you provide some sort of common thing that helps people to come together and participate?

Earlier Mary had acknowledged that her commonsense understandings of what was

normal and natural were challenged in interactions with ethnic councillors giving rise

to negative affects and a lack of meaning (Leeuwen, 2008). In contrast, this moment

demonstrates that Mary is passionate about facilitating meaningful intercultural

dialogue. In showing this openness, she acknowledges the limits of her cognitive

understanding and her desire for positive meaning. Leeuwen argues that affective

ambivalence involves the experience of both meaning and lack of meaning that may

not necessarily occur at the same time, but are structurally similarly because they are

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moments that elude consciousness and surpass the powers of imagination and

manipulation. This affective ambivalence has effects if it functions as a turning point

towards a positive moment that values other ways of knowing. Perhaps this positive

moment is evident when Mary talks about her work as a social and cultural planner:

Mary: There’s certainly a sense that culture relates to, when you talk about cultural planning, it’s definitely aligned to people from non-English speaking background, rather than a sense of any sort of Anglo-Australian culture.

When we talk about culture, when the discussion is had around culture, that’s seen as something outside what might be the dominant kind of white culture, yes. It’s like we don’t have, we don’t need that cultural discussion. It’s about other people’s culture, yes, or that interaction. It’s not set up in the sense that there’s a white culture included in that discussion (Local council officer interview, 10/07/03).

Mary recognises the difficulties of living with cultural diversity because whiteness is

always privileged rather than named, marked and made visible within local

government. The outcome is that the focus in Dandenong is to manage interaction

between ethnic groups through redistributive measures and recognition, rather than

intercultural dialogue that values ethnic voices and recognises that the commitment to

change is a shared responsibility. Affective ambivalence, on the other hand,

stimulates reflexive thinking making Mary aware of how formal white institutions

often have no idea of the complex nature of community work that informal

community groups are involved in:

Mary: There’s a lot of people who do work that’s totally outside the realm and understanding of council. For instance, in Dandenong you have a lot of quite big Buddhist churches, dealing with people from the various different communities. Like they might be from Laos, or Vietnamese or Thai, a lot of them are monks. And there are even workers in those churches that are doing community development work that we have no idea about. There’s actually a lot of people doing stuff that’s actually outside those formal mechanisms.

Mary contests stereotypical understandings of ethnic residents that she had

constructed earlier and underlines the commitment of people within religious

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organisations that can never be comprehended by council officers. In acknowledging

her incompetence and recognising the value of voluntary work within religious

organisations, Mary shifts the normative framework of whiteness and moves closer to

the positive moment. This is a moment that does not lead to wonder and fascination

as experienced by Amy, but is an act of citizenship, a deed that has the potential to

shift the norms of whiteness that provide ‘ontological certainty’ (Leeuwen 2008,

p.148) during intercultural encounters. Such moments provide an opportunity to

become aware of locally supported projects, participation in informal community

groups and gestures of neighbourly care and welcome towards new settlers that are

part of everyday life in Dandenong.

Conclusion This paper has drawn on recent, relevant and original empirical data to

demonstrate the affective dimension of intercultural encounters. It builds on

contemporary research on local governance by drawing attention to affective

ambivalence and how we might better live with cultural difference. Such work is

significant for building governance capacity in the multicultural city and dispelling

feelings of fear, threat and anxiety. By drawing on in-depth semi-structured

interviews with participants in the City of Greater Dandenong, a socially

disadvantaged and culturally diverse area in suburban Melbourne, this paper has

explored affective moments that give rise to antagonism or distrust, wonder and

fascination, indifference and ambivalence. The paper has shown that interethnic

tension can be productive if it opens up the possibility for affective ambivalence.

Similarly affective ambivalence is productive if it is a turning point towards a positive

moment. This is a moment that stimulates acts of citizenship that shift the framework

of whiteness, defers the judgement of others, acknowledges the limits of knowledge

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and welcomes the unfamiliar. Such positive moments present within intercultural

encounters enable local council officers, elected leaders, community groups and

residents to cooperate with trust and strengthen governance capacity. Interviews with

residents demonstrated that local citizens were engaged in community groups outside

the formal agencies of local government such as ethno-specific groups, faith groups,

sports and charitable organisations, non-governmental organisations, mothers’ groups

and neighbourhood groups. Engagement and participation in these groups produced a

strong emotional attachment to Dandenong, but engagement with and local

government was less common. Perhaps it is time to think of local governance in

terms of a creative intercultural dialogue, one that goes beyond tokenistic community

consultation, shifts the normative framework of whiteness and focuses on

engendering positive affective moments through informal partnerships with

community organisations.

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Valentine, G. (2008). Living with difference: reflections on geographies of encounter.

Progress in Human Geography, 32(3), 323-337. Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the other: Beyond deliberative democracy.

In S. Benhabib (Ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (pp. 120-135). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Young, I. M. (1999). Residential segregation and differentiated citizenship.

Citizenship Studies, 3(2), 237-252.

22

Total persons 125,520

Median age of persons 36

% of persons born overseas 51.5

% of person who speak only

English at home

38.5

% of persons practicing

Christianity

26.8

Youth unemployment rate (%) 14.6 (second highest in urban

Australia)

Unemployment rate (%) 9.4 (third highest in urban Australia)

Median household weekly Income ($) 770

Median weekly rent($) 160

ABS Seifa Index of Relative

Advantage and Disadvantage (2006)

Lowest quintile in the Melbourne

metropolitan area (highest

disadvantage)

Table 1: Selected characteristics: City of Greater Dandenong, 2006

Source: (ABS, 2006, 2009)

23

Figure 1: Location of Dandenong within metropolitan Melbourne

24

Figure 2: The Local Government Area of the City of Greater Dandenong

(Adapted from maps provided by the City of Greater Dandenong)